is a theater maker and educator. Her creative work is socially or civically engaged. In partnership with Joanna Merlin, she has worked with MICHA since its founding in 1999; first as Managing Director and currently in the role of Artistic Director. Her original performance work has been produced by Performance Space 122, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Seattle’s Studio Current and The Tin Shop. She collaborated with Sojourn Theatre to write and direct a bi-lingual, Eastern Washington based, production of their play, How To End Poverty in 90 Minutes (with 99 people you may or may not know) and was awarded a grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to diversify university curricula and amplify the oral histories of underrepresented community members. Jessica instigated the short film project, The Michael Chekhov Community Performs the Archive and is the editor of the expanded edition of Michael Chekhov’s Lessons for Teachers, and the english translation of Chekhov’s original story A Tale About Lies and How Swiftly They Spread Across the Earth. Together with Fern Sloan, she wrote the MICHA Workbook to assist those practically studying the Chekhov technique. She trained at MICHA and at the Moscow Art Theater and earned her MFA in Theatre: Contemporary Performance from Naropa University. Formerly Associate Professor of Theatre at Whitman College, she lives in Connecticut where she serves on the board of the Dragon’s Egg Studio and on the programming committee of the La Grua Cultural Center.